Meet the AirBnb hunter exposing vultures using California citys brutal loophole to push out tenants

A tech worker has turned his coding skills on San Diego’s red-hot vacation rental market, hunting for what he says are “apartment hotels” gobbling up homes once occupied by long-term tenants.By day, 42-year-old Jay Goldberg works as an engineer for Google.In his spare time, the Hillcrest homeowner pores over property records, short-term rental licenses and Airbnb listings looking for buildings that appear to have undergone a lucrative transformation — moving tenants out and tourists in, according to inewsource.Goldberg and a small army of citizen watchdogs say they have filed more than 2,000 reports with San Diego officials over suspected short-term rental violations.Their bigger concern is a loophole they say allows owners to clear tenants from multifamily buildings and then obtain licenses to operate the units as vacation rentals.San Diego’s rules do not automatically prevent an owner from receiving a short-term rental license if tenants were previously removed through buyouts or no-fault evictions.That means a building can potentially change hands, lose its long-term residents and reemerge as a collection of vacation rentals — a practice Goldberg believes is worsening the squeeze in an already punishing housing market.“The reason I’ve filed 2,500 reports is not because I expect them all to be solved in a reasonable amount of time or that I even personally think they should all be prioritized,” Goldberg told inewsource.

“But they’re flags in the sand that say something happened.”Goldberg founded Nice Neighbors, a watchdog group advocating for tougher short-term rental enforcement.Its website tracks licenses and Airbnb listings and maps properties the group believes warrant scrutiny.His obsession began after a neighboring townhouse began operating as a full-time vacation rental.

Soon Goldberg was using his engineering background to hunt for similar properties across the city.One case led him to former Pacific Beach tenant Michael Flore.Flo...